Guelph MP wants to get to bottom of tainted beef crisis

Guelph Mercury

GUELPH — With at least 11 people falling ill from eating meat tainted with E. coli, and the United States and Japan closing its borders to Canadian beef processed at the XL Foods Inc. plant in Brooks, Alta., Guelph MP Frank Valeriote is calling for a full, third-party investigation of Canada’s food safety network.

Valeriote want the investigation to start with the plant, but also include the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the Ministry of Agriculture itself.

He’s also calling for the food inspection agency to be overseen by the Ministry of Health rather than the Ministry of Agriculture.

“The pressure is on the Ministry of Agriculture to keep cattle moving through the plant,” Valeriote said in a phone interview over the weekend. “That can be in conflict with keeping people safe.

“This matter needs a full review. It’s not as big as what happened with mad cow disease. In this case it’s not the beef that’s in question but the plant. But we saw with the mad cow crisis it only takes one single incident to slap our borders closed to other countries. And it takes years to open them up again.”

With a growing list of meat products on the recall list, Valeriote said Canadians are beginning to question the entire food safety network.

“We need to be able to trust our food,” he said.

Valeriote is vice chair of the Commons standing committee on agriculture and agri-food. At the very least, the committee should be allowed to investigate the issue, he said.

He was granted an emergency motion by the Speaker of the House on Wednesday and the committee debated the issue until midnight, Valeriote said.

Because the debate was in camera, he’s not allowed to talk about how that discussion went.

“What I can say is that the motion did not come out of committee successfully,” he said.

On Thursday he reread his motion for a full investigation in the House of Commons and asked for consent from all parties.

“The Conservatives refused to support that motion,” he said. “The Conservatives have rejected any solution and any effort to discover what went on at XL Foods.”

On Tuesday, Valeriote is meeting with Liberal leader Bob Rae and industry leaders to decide what the party’s next steps will be on the issue.

“I will raise the notion that the head of CFIA should not be the minister of agriculture but the minister of health. (Agriculture Minister Gerry) Ritz is putting profit before people,” Valeriote said.

XL Foods Inc. is the largest beef processing plant in Canada, distributing 35 to 40 per cent of Canada’s beef and beef products, with international distribution as well. Some 4,000 head of cattle per day go through the plant.

The number of illnesses linked to beef products from the plant stands at 11 people from four provinces.

On Monday, the U.S. Food Safety Inspection Service almost tripled its estimate of the amount of recalled beef that was imported from the XL Foods Inc. plant.

The agency issued a revised statement stating that an estimated 1,134,000 kilograms of beef entered the U.S. that could potentially be contaminated with E. coli. The previous estimate, released on Sept. 28, said that almost 404,000 kilograms of the affected beef had entered the country.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, meanwhile, added yet more items to its long list of beef products that have been pulled from store shelves across Canada.

According to a timeline posted on the CFIA website, authorities with the U.S. food safety service found E. coli 0157.H7 in a sample from a shipment of beef from XL Foods Inc. on Sept. 3. On Sept. 4 the agency notified its Canadian counterpart, the same day CFIA also detected the same E. coli bacteria in a sample.

U.S. authorities found two more positive samples of E. coli on Sept. 12 and banned XL Foods Inc. products from crossing its borders. On Sept. 13 the Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed two cases of human illness as a result of consuming the tainted beef, and XL Foods recalled beef products processed on Aug. 24, Aug. 28 and Sept. 5.

On Sept. 21, two additional production dates, Aug. 27 and Aug. 29, were added to the recall list increasing the list exponentially. On Sept. 27 CFIA suspended XL Foods’ licence and on Oct. 3, Ritz held the first news conference on the outbreak.

“CFIA didn’t close the plant until Sept. 27 — three weeks after tests first identified E. coli and two weeks after the Americans delisted XL Foods,” Valeriote said. “The minister knew on the 4th what was happening yet he let the plant continue to operate.”

Valeriote stressed that it’s still safe to eat beef as long as it’s not from the recall list and after it is cooked properly.

The Public Health Agency of Canada urges the following:

• Proper hygiene and safe food handling and preparation practices are key to preventing the spread of all food-borne illnesses, including E. coli.

• Hand washing is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of food-borne illness.

• Contaminated foods may look and smell normal. It is important to ensure that you thoroughly cook foods to destroy bacteria. Recalled products, however, should not be consumed and should be thrown away.